Drone Wars Event on 11/6

Join us tonight, Wednesday, November 6, 2013, at the Arlington Campus of George Mason University for Drone Wars: Challenges and Solutions, a panel discussion on a framework for the use of unmanned aerial vehicles under the law of armed conflict.

The opening reception will begin at 6:00 PM. At 6:30 PM, a drone pilot with the U.S. Air Force will give a brief presentation on how drones are operated, followed by the panel discussion and a post-panel networking reception with coffee and dessert.

The event will be held in the auditorium of Founders Hall, 3301 Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22201. The closest Metro station is Virginia Square/GMU on the Orange Line, just one block away. Garage parking is available under the building (access from N. Kirkwood Road).

About the Panelists

James Jay Carafano, Ph.D. is a leading expert in national security and foreign policy at The Heritage Foundation. Dr. Carafano serves as The Heritage Foundation’s Vice President, Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, E. W. Richardson Fellow, and Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies. Dr. Carafano also serves on the Homeland Security Advisory Council convened by the Secretary of Homeland Security and is an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the Institute of World Politics, along with serving as a senior fellow at George Washington University’s Homeland Security Policy Institute. Dr. Carafano is also a 25-year Army veteran who served as head speechwriter for the Army Chief of Staff and executive editor of Joint Force Quarterly. Dr. Carafano is a graduate of West Point, Georgetown University, and the U.S. Army War College. This past August, Dr. Carafano defended the legality of drones under international law in The Atlantic in an article entitled “Say What You Want About Drones – They’re Perfectly Legal.”

Tara McKelvey is a feature writer for BBC News conducting investigative work on leading national security issues from around the world. Formerly, Ms. McKelvey was a correspondent for Newsweek and The Daily Beast, a research fellow at NYU Law’s Center on Law and Security, a Hoover Media Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and a fellow in John Hopkins University’s International Reporting Project. Ms. McKelvey has taught at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2011. Ms. McKelvey is a graduate of Georgetown University. In February 2011, Ms. McKelvey reported a detailed review of the CIA’s drone program in an article entitled “Inside the Killing Machine,” and in April 2012 conducted a key interview of State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, cataloging his startling reversal on the legality of targeted drone killings under international law.

Scott Shane is a reporter in the Washington bureau of The New York Times, where he writes about national security and a range of other subjects. Before joining The New York Times, Mr. Shane was a reporter for The Baltimore Sun where he was the Moscow correspondent from 1988 to 1991 and wrote a book on the Soviet collapse, Dismantling Utopia: How Information Ended the Soviet Union, which the Los Angeles Times described as “one of the essential works on the fall of the Soviet Union.” In 1995, he co-wrote a six-part explanatory series of articles on the National Security Agency, the first major investigation of NSA since James Bamford’s 1982 book The Puzzle Palace. Mr. Shane is a graduate of Williams College and Oxford University. Mr. Shane has played a key role in reporting on the legality of the United States’ drone programs and wrote a key article in July 2012 entitled “The Moral Case for Drones,” which scrutinized the alleged moral advantages of unmanned aircraft.

Jeremy Rabkin (Moderator) is a Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law. Before joining the faculty in June 2007, he was a professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University for over two decades. Professor Rabkin serves on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace, originally appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 and then appointed for a second term by President Barack Obama and reconfirmed by the Senate in 2011. He also serves on the Board of Academic Advisers of the American Enterprise Institute and on the Board of Directors of the Center for Individual Rights, a public interest law firm based in Washington, DC.

Presented in partnership with the Federalist Society and the Military Law Society at George Mason University School of Law. Register now!

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